Otter Tail Canton wants bombinate to survey

A few years ago,Learn about the beauty of porcelaintiles. the association in Otter Tail Canton anticipation they had appear up with an able and bargain way to map canton acreage and analysis for aholic dams in arising ditches.

They congenital their own bombinate with a brace thousand dollars account of computer equipment, a barn aperture limited control, a agenda camera they bought at Wal-Mart, and a cardboard and balsa 9-pound even anyone could buy on the Internet. Using GPS and Mosaic mapping equipment, they could analysis 80 acreage of farmland 400 anxiety aerial in about 20 minutes, a job that could yield hours on bottom in hip boots or amount bags if they assassin a pilot to fly overhead.

That was until the cease and abandon letter came from the federal government. The even has been ashore back then.

"Somebody from Washington alleged and said, 'What are you doing?' recalled Brian Armstrong, spatial abode coordinator with the county's GIS Department. "I said, 'I'm accomplishing this.' And he said, 'You can't do that.'"

County admiral afresh approved approval from the FAA to activate aerial their bombinate again, in the action acceptable affected in the beyond agitation over the added calm use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, added frequently accepted as drones. Otter Tail Canton showed up on a account of groups gluttonous to fly aloft U.S.We offer custom plasticinjectionmoulding with full in-house. skies that included the military, the FBI, Border and Customs Patrol, and NASA.

When the account was fabricated accessible by a accumulation alleged the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based customer agenda advancement group, questions were aloft a part of civilian libertarians and cabal theorists about why the brand of quiet Otter Tail Canton in west-central Minnesota would charge its own drone.And a lack of a standout indoortracking Systems (IPS) technology. Ever since, Brian Armstrong has been answer that his bombinate would be acclimated for surveying, not surveillance.

"I got bent up in the 'Why are you spying on us?' program," he said, "In added countries, humans use this for ecology crops, managing wildlife. There's a lot of uses humans accept for these baby remote-controlled aircraft."

When it was operating, the Otter Tail Canton bombinate was never annihilation added than what you could fly with your kids in the esplanade on a Sunday. Armstrong operated the even with two humans on anniversary end of the flight path, with two added spotters carefully to watch for "hot air balloons, 747s and fighter jets so it wouldn't blast into anybody at a whooping 400 anxiety aloft the ground," Armstrong said.

When he inquired about what would be bare to authorize for federal approval, he was told he had to be a registered pilot and that his arena aggregation bare to canyon airmen physicals.

"All to sit in a backyard armchair with a brace of binoculars to watch a even 400 anxiety aloft the arena snapping photographs."

In his additional abounding division out of the Yankees rotation, Nova has already afresh apparent a adroitness for acceptable amateur and an adeptness to angle in and out of trouble. His strikeouts are up and his walks are down, but Nova has absolved a accomplished line.

He leads the Major Leagues in extra-base hits allowed, and the 20 homers he’s accustomed are six abroad from acceleration his home run absolute from endure season.

“You don’t wish that to be a accepted theme,” catcher Russell Martin said.The reality of convenient handsfreeaccess contro.

“That happens every time he’s out there, but it’s nice to see a guy if he does get in trouble, to angle out of it. You wish him to accept added accent chargeless innings than what he’s had, but he kept us in the bold able-bodied (on Friday night), fabricated some pitches if he bare to. That’s what I’m traveling to remember.”

With 10 wins and a 4.10 ERA, Nova’s been a acceptable amateur for the Yankees.

He’s had stretches of accepted ascendancy -two double-digit strikeout amateur and a 1.26 ERA in the ages of June -but he doesn’t consistently accomplish it attending easy.

In his accomplished four starts, Nova has accustomed at atomic nine hits three times. He captivated the A’s to two runs through 6.Read about kidneystone symptoms and signs,2 innings on Friday, but that appropriate casting about 5 extra-base hits.

“That’s what’s happening,” administrator Joe Girardi said. “Is there a acumen why, if he misses, he gets hit harder than some others? I can’t absolutely acquaint you why that’s happening. But if he does accomplish a aberration - he fabricated a aberration to (Josh) Reddick with a slider, and he fabricated a aberration to Coco Crisp with a slider -when you don’t get it low abundant to larboard handers, they can do some damage.”

What Would You Do If You Got Superpowers?

When I was a young boy, I yearned for super powers. After watching The Adventures of Superman on TV, starring George Reeves as the Man of Steel, I would put on my t-shirt with a big ‘S’ on the front, tie a towel around my neck as a cape, and make every effort to fly around the house. On more than one occasion, I actually prayed and asked God to give me super powers. I promised to use them to help people. But, mostly, I just wanted to fly. Thankfully, I did not have the privilege of watching shows like Jackass, which might have encouraged me to try flying off the roof. No, I was stuck with my mortal powers . .Full color plasticcard printing and manufacturing services.I found them to have sharp edges where the injectionmoldes came together while production. . still am, as a matter of fact.

But, I wonder what I would do if I got superpowers.Find rubberhose companies from India. What if I could fly? What if I could leap tall buildings in a single bound? What if I could crawl up walls like a spider or stretch myself as if made of miraculous rubber? What would I do? What would I be?

According to the recent spate of superhero movies, chances are I would become a paragon of virtue, wisdom, and courage.Proxense's advanced handsfreeaccess technology. I would be willing to sacrifice my life to save others. And this would be true,Silicone moldmaking Rubber, regardless of how self-centered and amoral I had been before my miraculous transformation.

Consider the case of the Green Lantern in the recent movie called, sensibly enough, Green Lantern. I won’t be spoiling much by telling you that this movie tells the story of Hal Jordan, a self-centered and obnoxious fighter pilot who is chosen by a magic ring to become a Green Lantern, a guardian of justice and harmony in the universe. Right before our very eyes, a man who might best be described as a jerk becomes a virtuous, wise, selfless hero who is willing to die for the sake of others. Yet, the movie gives us very little reason to believe that this should have happened. It seems more plausible to believe that a man was endowed with astronomical superpowers than that he instantly changed his entire character and value system. My son, the one of boyhood Superman fame, warned me that Green Lantern wasn’t a good film. I should have heeded his warning.

Some movies try to provide a rationale for their superhero’s exemplary character. Spider-Man, for example, tells the story of a young man who was raised in a loving, moral family. When, after receiving his arachnid-like powers, he uses them for selfish purposes, he pays a high price in the death of his beloved uncle, a death he could have prevented with less self-absorption. Plus, Uncle Ben left Peter Parker AKA Spider-Man with sage advice, “Remember, with great power. comes great responsibility.”

The 2011 film, Captain America, tries in a different way to explain the moral fiber of its superhero. In this case, Steve Rogers, who becomes Captain America through he wonders of science, is chosen precisely because of his ethical standards. He is courageous, with a strong sense of justice, and a lack of desire to kill people, even the bad guys. Thus, the willingness of Captain America to give up his own life for others makes sense.

The recent movie, Chronicle, tells a different story altogether. When three high-school aged boys gain superpowers, at first they continue to be more or less the same boys. Their personalities don’t change. Nor do their values. They do not envision using their powers to help others. Rather, they simply want to enjoy their superhuman endowments and, if possible, become more popular with their peers, especially girls. But in one of the boys, the one whose family is painfully dysfunctional, superpowers simply magnify his own moral confusion. He is not miraculously transformed into a superhuman do-gooder. Rather, he becomes dangerous, a genuine mortal threat.

New laws overturning Ind. Supreme Court decisions demonstrate balance

On a yellow sheet of paper torn from a legal pad, Indiana Supreme Court Justice Frank Sullivan Jr. keeps the list.

It's just four Supreme Court case names and four Indiana Senate bill numbers, but amid those words and numbers lies the balance of power between the state's judicial and legislative branches.

This year's General Assembly approved four measures signed into law by Gov. Mitch Daniels that overturned four 2011 rulings of the state's high court. In each case,Proxense's advanced handsfreeaccess technology. state law was clarified or changed in response to the court's interpretation of it.

"Three of them I thought they were wrong to do, and one of them I thought they were right to do," Sullivan said. "Each of them represents an interesting story of how the legislative and judicial branches interact."

Regarding the three law changes Sullivan objected to, Senate Enrolled Act 1 details individual self-defense rights following Barnes v. State, which said Hoosiers can never resist police. Senate Enrolled Act 97 redefines public intoxication in response to Moore v. State. Senate Enrolled Act 132 declares underground aquifers cannot be regulated by local governments.

On the other hand, Sullivan's dissent in Citizens State Bank v. Countryside formed the basis of Senate Enrolled Act 298, setting the priority of mortgage holders in a foreclosure action.

While Sullivan believes the Legislature did not need to act on the first three, he acknowledges it has the right to do so.

"Under our separation of powers in the government and the way our constitution works, the Legislature has the last word," Sullivan said.A culture af Mizukabi molds. "Except when it comes to matters of constitutional law."

State Sen.This page provides information about 'werkzeugbaus; Ed Charbonneau, R-Valparaiso, co-sponsored Senate Enrolled Acts 1 and 132. He said his goal was not necessarily to overturn the court but to make sure the court interpreted the law as the Legislature intended, especially on self-defense.

"We felt that they went too far in how they got to the conclusion that they got and wanted to make it clear what we felt should be the law," Charbonneau said.

While the governor could have vetoed the four new laws, Daniels said he generally defers to the General Assembly, especially since only a simple majority is required to override his veto.Glass Tile and Glass Mosaics for less at the glassmosaic Outlet.

"If the Legislature is responding to the judgment of the judicial branch by changing the laws of the state, I have to have a really, really, really overwhelming reason to veto that," Daniels said. "And I have to do it knowing that I may not have any effect on the final outcome."

Sullivan said the stakes are considerably higher when a Supreme Court ruling interprets the Indiana Constitution, such as recent decisions approving a voter photo identification requirement and authorizing the Indiana Toll Road lease.

In those cases,Kitchen floortiles at Great Prices from Topps Tiles. short of amending the constitution — typically a four-year process — there is no legislative remedy.

"Where the rubber meets the road is when the court says that something the Legislature passed is unconstitutional," Sullivan said. "Because when the court says that, it's saying it's beyond the power of the Legislature to do what it did, and that's a hell of a thing."

Power outage shocks businesses

A large power outage sent holiday-makers heading for home in the popular Whangaruru Harbour area, as water and petrol pumps failed, toilets could not be flushed and fridges and freezers fell silent during the weekend.

Some campervan and caravan tourists found themselves marooned on the coast because they did not have enough fuel to get to the nearest petrol station.

Lines company Northpower said it believes the outage may have been caused by an insulator and conductor being hit by a bullet. A helicopter brought in to assist with locating the fault spotted a damaged pole near the road on the boundary of a forest block near Mokau.

Power was restored to all customers by mid-day yesterday, but not before Travis O'Malley and Nena Rogers, owners of Oakura Bay Stores and The Tin Tui Cafe, had lost thousands of dollars in income and ruined stock.

The business runs 23 chillers and stock levels were extremely high at this time of the year, said Mr O'Malley.

"Deliveries are on the way as we speak and what do we do?" he asked.

The couple frantically moved product out of their biggest freezer to smaller ones in case sudden restoration of power blew out its compressor, involving huge repair costs.

"We've been through outages before and we know all about blown-out compressors. We've had eight in 16 years. The longest outage was 24 hours when a forestry company dropped a tree on the line. Outages have massive impact on a business like this.

"We are still recovering from the big storm of 2007 when the road was blocked for weeks and the expense of having to put in petrol pumps when Shell withdrew from the area the same year. This setback comes on top of a poor-performance summer. It's incredibly disappointing," Mr O'Malley said.

A generator big enough to keep all their chillers going through summer was beyond their financial resources. Stock losses were covered by insurance but the business had to pay the first $2000; meanwhile loss of trade over the last long weekend of summer was not covered. He said he feels sorriest for the people who earn a living looking after holiday homes.

"The owners couldn't clean up when they left. I know someone who has to go in and do the dishes and wash and clean everything in about 12 baches," he said.

Power began to fail intermittently just before the weekend in an area stretching from Whakapara 23km north-west of Whangarei, north to the area of Whangaruru harbour, including the Oakura settlement and Bland Bay, culminating in a complete outage from 4.30am on Monday.

General manager of Northpower's network division, Graham Dawson, said the fault would have been extremely difficult to spot quickly from the ground.

"We were almost at the point of having to climb every pole along that section of the line which would have been very time-consuming," he said. The company had done a huge amount of recent maintenance on the Helena Bay/Bland Bay line and there was more to come, he said, but in this case "there appeared to be possible third party damage to the insulator. The pole and cross-arm were in very good condition".

He said the company spent around $20 million annually on maintenance and asset replacement.

The Weird Physics Behind The Jacob’s Ladder

In old movies, when there is electricity involved, there always seem to be two wires fanning out and a slowly-rising arc of electricity between them. This contraption is called Jacob's Ladder, and although it looks uselessly sci-fi, it was actually quite useful in machinery... a hundred years ago.

Jacob's Ladder is a piece of physics equipment that is both simple and showy, and so found itself right at home in Hollywood. It probably found bit parts in a bunch of horror and sci-fi movies, but its starring role was in the 1931 version of Frankenstein. In the famous "It's Alive!" scene, there are any number of electrical devices in the lab, and most of them are pictured as two wires, with an arc of electricity branching up between them until it crackles into the air. There are two in the lab, prominently displayed just the other side of the camera from Frankenstein's body, and there is one on the dais upon which the monster is raised. Their movie arcs of electricity make the scene look active and alive, even when Frankenstein's monster is just a corpse.

What's actually going on? Nothing sinister, but something a little bit dangerous. I certainly wouldn't want to be on a moving platform with a Jacob's Ladder device and a lot of flapping bed sheets. The device consists of two wires held close together. Beneath them is a device that will raise the electrical potential difference between them. Electrons are yearning to jump from one wire to the other, but the air between them acts as an insulator. Eventually, enough voltage will cause electrons to jump away from the air molecules they're associated with. They won't necessarily head to the wire, they'll just be separated from their atoms and molecules a bit. The air has now changed from a gas to a plasma. And the plasma, which is more free with its electrons, conducts electricity. The electrons zoom through the air from one wire to another, and we see an arc of light.

But why does it travel? Since the wires fan out, and the electrons will take the shortest jump they can find, there doesn't seem to be a reason for the electrical arc to move to where the wires are father apart.

The electrons do look for the path of least resistance, but the path of least resistance is always where the plasma is. And the moving electrons heat the plasma around them. This ionized air is less dense than the surrounding air, and moves upwards. The electrons follow it, until at last the jump becomes too far for them, and the connection is lost. Jacob's Ladder is an impressive looking prop, but it needs to be handled with care. The connection can, under the right circumstances, set fire to paper and cloth. Not something to have around an actor's pretty face or sprayed-up hair.

Jacob's Ladder seems pretty useless when it comes to pretty much everything but making movie audiences ooh and ah. It certainly wouldn't have brought anyone back to life — though if they were sleeping, I imagine being set on fire would wake them. Their actual use, back in the early 1900s, was much less glamorous. They ionized the nitrogen in air. Some of that nitrogen would re-combine with oxygen, making nitric oxide. This was used in fertilizer, so it is possible that Jacob's Ladder did 'give life' to something in a round-about way. That wouldn't have impressed Frankenstein, though.

Warning - treat all power wires as live

Any fallen power wire should always be treated as live until proven otherwise, the general manager of Electricity Ashburton says.

His comments come after the tragic death of a North Canterbury man who was electrocuted on a rural North Canterbury property at the weekend.

Brendan Walker, 39, died and his wife Sarah is in a comfortable condition in hospital with burns to her feet and hands after going to his aid, while the couple's seven-year-old son Ethan is being hailed a hero after running back to the house to raise the alarm.

The incident was triggered by a small fire which burnt through the power pole and released the bracket which held the insulators, which were attached to the wire.

The insulator and bracket fell and dragged the power line down to about a metre off the ground.

Mr Walker was checking on cattle on Saturday morning when he saw three cattle lying in a paddock.

He drove his quad bike over to get a closer look and appeared to have driven into the same power line which killed the cows, and was electrocuted.

Electricity Ashburton general manager Gordon Guthrie said fires did occur on power poles from time to time, when insulators broke for whatever reason.

Generally if a power wire touched the ground, it would short out. But in this case the wire did not appear to have hit the ground so had remained live.

Mr Guthrie said power wires should always be treated with extreme caution.

"You should treat every wire as live," he said.

"These things can happen and you've just got to be aware of it."

Any downed power wires should be reported to authorities immediately.

It's believed the fallen power line which killed Mr Walker was carrying more than 1000 volts.

Mrs Walker and her son came across the scene when they left the house to check their letterbox. She was shocked by the power line while trying to help her dead husband but Ethan escaped injuries, police constable John Eagle said.
Power to the line was cut off directly after the incident, but had since been repaired by MainPower.

MainPower manager Peter Hurford said the company declined to comment on the incident until they had spoken to police.
In 2009, Mid Canterbury husband and wife Lionel and Shirley Donaldson were killed on their Mayfield farm after an auger hit overhead power lines in their farm yard.

A coroner's inquest found that Mrs Donaldson may also have been going to her husband's aid when she too was electrocuted.

Mr Guthrie said machinery like augers and irrigators hitting power lines did happen from time to time in Mid Canterbury and people should always be aware of overhead lines.

The Darkest Hour is the best worst movie of the year

Alien invasion flick The Darkest Hour, released this morning, is like a bad holiday fruitcake that somebody tried to spruce up with a zillion lumps of neon-colored, soggy jellybean guts. Put another way, this movie is what you get when you add the plot of Skyline to the creature effects of The Happening. It is truly the greatest bad monster movie of 2011.

Two guys, one of whom is played by Emile Hirsch, fly into Moscow to sell some people in suits on their real-time mobile travel social nightlife youth software, called something like MySquareDoppler, which is variously described as a "blog" and an "app." When they arrive at their business meeting, they discover that some Swedish guy they were working with on the intertubes has stolen their app blog social thing and is making the pitch to the Russian investors on his own.

"OMG WTF BBQ!" the guy who isn't Emile Hirsch says.

"You should have made me sign an NDA!" retorts Swedish intertube guy.

"You mean a Non Douchebag Agreement?" Hirsch snarks in one of the film's many "clever quip" moments.

And then a bunch of people yell in Russian and suddenly we're in a nightclub and Hirsch and not-Hirsch are drinking and hitting on some women who know them from MySquareDoppler.

Which is around the time a bunch of lens flares fall from the sky and start menacing everybody with their invisibleness, which has the property of reducing anybody who touches it to glowing specks that are super cheap to render in Photoshop. Our gang of social mobile app developers, including Swedish guy, have to make their way across a foreign city with the two women while dodging the invisible monsters! The only hint that the monsters are around is that they juice up all electrical devices - including lights, cell phones, car alarms, whatever - so that their presences are announced by flickering lights and other spooky shit.

I should note that the "we had no money and therefore made invisible monsters" thing isn't quite as bad as you might think. The idea of tracking aliens indirectly with handfuls of lightbulbs is pretty cool, and there are some amazing scenes of the shredded Mocow: planes have plowed into malls, tankers have shattered bridges, and the aliens are vaporizing buildings spectacularly in order to extract minerals or tap into our geothermal heat or maybe mine for holiday fruitcakes.

When it comes to plot and dialogue, however, all this creative conceptual design is wasted. Scenes are so hastily edited that we actually see characters run through exactly the same place twice in the opening alien attack sequence. And, inevitably, the aliens' powers change dramatically from scene to scene as the plot requires. At first they reduce everything they touch to dust. Then it turns out they have to lasso people with poorly-aimed lightning ropes first. Also they can't see through glass for some reason, and they can't seem to run or fly even though they flew down to Earth.

Eventually our band of mobile social app losers randomly stumbles across several other survivors, one of whom is a mad scientist living in a Faraday cage who has developed microwave guns to "disrupt the alien shields." Because - wait, whut? They aren't electrical aliens? Nope - they actually just have electrical SHIELDS, which we can disrupt and then "shoot with good Russian bullets," as another resistance guy says. Also, Faraday cages are the magical weapon humans can use against the aliens because the aliens can't see inside them - but the humans can use radios and cell phones inside them to communicate with each other. The mad scientist has even wrapped his adorable orange cat in a bunch of wires (a feline Faraday cage?) to make him invisible to the aliens.

OK, time out for a moment of nerd snarkage. The whole Faraday cage bit pissed me off. I was willing to give you the "glass as shield" defense because, hell, glass is an insulator. (Sadly, nobody thought of dressing Emile Hirsch in a rubber fetish suit to make him invisible because hey - rubber is an insulator too!) But people - the whole point of a Faraday cage is that most electrical signals cannot penetrate it. That means signals can't come in, and they can't come out. You cannot use radio or mobile phones inside them. Sigh.

Anyway, my OCD Faraday cage issues are like screaming about a grease fire during a mega volcano eruption. There were so many inconsistencies in this flick that it seemed like the whole crew had decided to embrace the credo that Hirsch and not-Hirsch espouse early on: "Every culture has alcohol and religion. That's why I drink religiously!" See what I mean about the writing in this flick? Pure gold.

When leaving home is the only way out

EVERY culture has its own spectre of hardship, says economist Alan Barrett. For Germans, it is the hyper-inflation of the Weimar Republic and its destruction of families' hard-earned savings. For the English, it is the rationing during and after World War II, which left some in that generation still prone to hoarding every time headlines cause alarm. For the Irish, it is landlessness.

Their folk memory turns on the stories of the potato famine of the 1840s, when starving people were evicted from their homes by English landlords and died by the roadsides with grass stains around their mouths.

Even today, says Professor Barrett, of Trinity College, Dublin, "in the social collective consciousness, losing your property and eviction are the worst things that can possibly happen."

This has led to a national preoccupation with property ownership, agrees Professor Piaras Mac Einri of Cork University, "We have an obsession with land. Owning your own land is the biggest thing you can do.''

Which partly explains what has happened with traditionally frugal, hard-working Ireland. In the 15 years to 2008 the country boomed, proclaimed as "the Celtic Tiger". On a surge of prosperity and optimism, and turbo-charged by low interest rates, Ireland spent billions building roads, luxury hotels, golf courses, and a gleaming, futuristic, 600 million (A$783 million) international airport, T2. The Irish also borrowed heavily to buy into a feverish local property market.

Barrett, who is on secondment from Ireland's Economic and Social Research Institute, says: "If you asked anybody what was the big benefit of the Celtic Tiger, I think a lot of people would have answered that for the first time ever, if you were born in Ireland you could assume that you could live and work in Ireland for the rest of your life."

But the Celtic Tiger is now a mewing kitten. Last month marked the first anniversary of Ireland's humiliating bailout by the troika of the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund, without which it would be bankrupt. Ireland has also just suffered its fourth consecutive austerity budget, this time one that provides an "adjustment" of

3.8 billion through increased taxes and slashed spending. It follows cuts of 4 billion last year.

The Irish are talking about unemployment tripling to 14.5 per cent with 450,000 now jobless, about the way houses have lost half their value and about the big cuts to salaries and social services that make life harder. But there is another painful Irish spectre that is not getting as much airplay - forced emigration.

Emma and Eoin Monaghan are typical of those hardest hit by the crash. They have regretfully decided that they must leave the country if they and their children are to have a future. He is 35 and works as a thermal insulator; she is 29 and works part-time as a make-up artist. They have two children, five-year-old Jamie and baby Maleah, nine months, and live in a Celtic Tiger-era housing estate at Donabate, on the edge of Dublin.

They did what they thought was the responsible thing and bought a house before they had children, at a time when prices were rising fast, because they feared they might not get into the market at all if they dithered.

"The day we actually bought, there was a big queue," Emma says. "They said if you didn't bring your deposit within 24 hours you would lose your place. We were so frightened that we wouldn't even get on the property ladder."

They were conservative, for the time; they took a mortgage of 100 per cent, when all around them people were borrowing even more than that to add on a car, or a renovation. Between 1998 and 2008, Irish banks borrowed 300 billion to fund loans for property speculation, which amounted to 2 times the country's gross domestic product.

FDSOI less 'risk' than FinFETs, says SOI body

The SOI Industry Consortium, and industry body for proponents for silicon-on-insulator manufacturing, reckons it's got fresh evidence in favor of using the fully-depleted version of its technology FDSOI instead of the FinFET style of manufacturing favored by Intel.

The consortium said that collaborative research recently completed by STMicroelectronics, IBM, ARM, Globalfoundries and other semiconductor companies had confirmed equivalent performance to FinFETs at 28-nm and 20-nm nodes but with a simpler manufacturing process.

The joint research was performed by using an FD-SOI process to fabricate 28nm chips. Test results on these chips were in line with predictions from computer-based models previously developed to benchmark FD-SOI device performance, confirming the models' reliability, the consortium said.

"Not only do the benchmarking results show that FD-SOI can deliver the power and performance of FinFET as early as the 28-nm and 20-nm technology nodes, but FD-SOI's ability to accommodate planar architectures presents much lower manufacturing risk than FinFET," said Horacio Mendez, executive director of the SOI Industry Consortium.

"This makes FD-SOI an easy-to-implement solution for cost-sensitive applications that require high performance and low power consumption in standby and active modes, including mobile electronics such as smart phones and tablet computers."

The simulations, which are now believed to hold true, show the feasability of running all digital device designs, including SRAMs, at Vdd voltages down to 0.6-V, the consortium said.

The SOI Industry Consortium did not address directly the issue of its starting cost disadvantage, from the use of SOI wafer. But said that a study published in July 2011 had showed that the cost of fabricating 20-nm SOC devices on FD-SOI wafers will be comparable to using planar bulk transistors - and more economical than using FinFETs.

Nor did the SOI Industry Consortium pass any comment on the process technology being proposed by SuVolta Inc. (Los Gatos, Calif.) which is claimed to have many of the same planar benefits of FDSOI without the expense of starting with SOI wafers.

Back in May 2011 Intel released details of its 22-nm process called 1270 that uses FinFETs. The first wafers were due to come out of the D1D research fab in Oregon with volume production due to start at the F32 fab in Arizona in the second half of 2011.

Getting to know snow

Snow here in the High Country is a thing of beauty, covering the landscape in a peaceful white. It is as valuable now as gold was to the miners in this area and snow is actually a mineral! The definition of a mineral is: “A naturally occurring homogeneous solid, inorganically formed, with a definite chemical composition and an ordered atomic arrangement.”

Snow is beautiful as each snowflake is unique; a slice of a six-sided crystal and every snowflake, like a quartz crystal, is vibrant and vibrating. Snow crystals form in six-sided shapes because water molecules are made of one oxygen and two hydrogen molecules. As water begins to crystallize into ice, its hydrogen molecules hook together in ways that form six-sided crystals.

Snowflakes are agglomerates of many snow crystals. Most snowflakes are less than one-half inch across. Under certain conditions, usually requiring near-freezing temperatures, light winds and unstable, convective atmospheric conditions, much larger and irregular flakes can form. According to the Guinness Book of Records, the largest snowflake ever measured was 15 inches wide and 8 inches thick. This was observed and recorded in 1887 at Fort Keogh, Mont.

So what is snow? It is a form of precipitation within the Earth's atmosphere in the form of crystalline water ice, consisting of a multitude of snowflakes that fall from clouds. Since snow is composed of small ice particles, it is a granular material. It has an open and therefore soft structure, unless packed by external pressure.

Snowfall tends to form within regions of upward motion of air around a type of low-pressure system. In mountainous areas, heavy snow is possible where upslope flow is maximized within windward sides of the terrain at elevation if the temperature is low enough.

Why is snow white? Visible sunlight is white and most natural materials absorb some sunlight which gives them their color. Snow, however, reflects most of the sunlight. The complex structure of snow crystals results in countless tiny surfaces from which visible light is efficiently reflected. What little sunlight is absorbed by snow is absorbed uniformly over the wavelengths of visible light, thus giving snow its white appearance.

The fluffiest, lowest density snows typically fall with light winds and temperatures near 15 degrees Fahrenheit. At colder temperatures, the crystal structure and size change. At very cold temperatures near 0 degrees Fahrenheit, crystals tend to be smaller so that they pack more closely together as they accumulate, producing snow that may be denser.

Fresh snow absorbs sound, lowering ambient noise over a landscape because the trapped air between snowflakes absorbs vibration. Walking across snowfall produces a squeaking sound at low temperatures.

A layer of snow is made up of ice grains with air in between the ice grains. Because the snow layer is mostly empty air space, when you step on a layer of snow you compress that layer a little or a lot, depending on how old the snow is. As the snow compresses, the ice grains rub against each other. This creates friction or resistance; the colder the temperature, the greater the friction between the grains of ice. The sudden squishing of the snow at lower temperatures produces the creaking sound. At warmer temperatures closer to melting, this friction is reduced to the point where the sliding of the grains against each other produces little or no noise.

In a snow pack with a significant temperature gradient, large six-sided, cup shaped “depth hoar crystals” form a loosely packed layer at the bottom. Many small non-hibernating mammals depend upon these loose snow crystals for easy construction of tunnels throughout the subnivean environment. This “sugar snow” can often be the weak and unstable layer that causes avalanche hazards.

Snow cover can protect crops from extreme cold. A blanket of snow keeps the ground evenly frozen, preventing frost heaves and protecting the plants from upheaval.

Each snowflake forms around a particle of dust, which is a tiny grain of soil containing a minute amount of minerals. The minerals in snow are absorbed into the soil, and when the ground thaws, they are taken up by the plants. Minerals provide structure and allow communication in cells, plants and animals.

The water content of snow is variable. Ten inches of fresh snow can contain as little as 0.10 inches of water or as much as 5 inches, depending on crystal structure, wind speed and temperature.

One major benefit of a good snow cover is that snow is an excellent insulator of the soil. Without snow, very cold temperatures can freeze the soil deeper and deeper. Generally, temperatures underneath a layer of snow increase about 2 degrees F for each inch of accumulation. Because the soil also gives off some heat, the temperature at the soil surface can be much warmer than the air temperature.

Most skiers are familiar with the many terms referring to snow or snow conditions: boilerplate, breakable crust, powder, champagne powder, corduroy, corn, hard pack, packed powder, moguls, cornice, glacier, flurries and avalanche just to name a few. The most magical moments on the mountain are a sunny morning after a fresh snowfall when sun shining on a few stray flakes in the air look like floating diamonds or stardust against a brilliant blue sky.

Ferroelectric capacitors promise ultra-cool computers

Good news from the research labs of the University of California, Berkeley: the scientists buried deep within the University’s electrical engineering department might have found a way to cool all our computers down, and get us back on the Moore’s Law highway.

(And speaking as someone whose laptop keyboard is currently almost too hot to type on, this news seems very good indeed).

The researchers have shown that it is possible to reduce the voltage required to keep a charge stored in a capacitor; this has been stalled at around 1 volt per transistor for some time. As the density of transistors increases, so both the power required to operate them, and the amount of heat they throw out rises.

This bottleneck is one of the main triggers for interest in spintronics and quantum computing. But what if conventional silicon can just be made to work better?

From the University’s press release : The solution proposed by [Sayeef Salahuddin, UC Berkeley assistant professor of electrical engineering] and his team is to modify current transistors so that they incorporate ferroelectric materials in their design, a change that could potentially generate a larger charge from a smaller voltage. This would allow engineers to make a transistor that dissipates less heat, and the shrinking of this key computer component could continue.

Ferroelectric materials are those which can hold both positive and negative charge, and can hold that charge even without a voltage being applied. The researchers found that layering a ferroelectric material and an electrical insulator in a capacitor resulted in this negative capacitance – a phenomenon theorised by Salahuddin when he was a graduate student at Purdue University.

"This work is the proof-of-principle we have needed to pursue negative capacitance as a viable strategy to overcome the power draw of today’s transistors," said Salahuddin. "If we can use this to create low-power transistors without compromising performance and the speed at which they work, it could change the whole computing industry.”

Two Out of Four Must Go!

For the most part, tower insulators are pretty rugged. I’ve been in this business for more than 35 years and have never seen a base insulator fail — or even crack … until recently.

Porcelain is a rugged material that is very durable in compression; it does not crush. That makes it an excellent material for use in high weight-bearing applications (such as under a tower). The same material is used for guy wire insulators in AM applications, with the guy cable rigged through the insulators so that they compress the porcelain material and don’t pull on it.

In guyed AM tower applications, a cone-shaped or cylindrical insulator is placed between the base pier and the tower base plate with the full weight of the tower compressing the material of the insulator.

Free-standing towers are a little different because they have both downward and upward moments, depending on the direction and velocity of the wind. As such, base insulators under the legs of a free-standing tower have to work in both directions, both supporting the weight of the tower and holding the tower leg to the foundation, depending on instantaneous conditions. That double duty requires a special design, usually a pair of porcelain insulators held captive in a steel or iron frame. The lower insulator supports the tower leg’s weight while the upper holds the tower leg down.

In my company, we have a number of “legacy” AM signals, and some of these employ free-standing towers with this type of dual insulator design. Some of these towers and insulators date back to the mid-1930s, a testament to their toughness and durability.

Base insulators have to operate out in the elements, providing isolation between the metal members above and the ground below in all kinds of conditions — wet, dry, dirty and clean. It’s almost unheard of for a properly-selected base insulator to arc over due to RF excitation or a combination of RF plus static electricity. Ball gaps are usually provided across the base insulator to provide a discharge path for static and lightning away from the porcelain material of the insulator.